Jesus and Poverty and Dwelling Among Us

I have a pet peeve. It’s North American children (and adults) picturing Jesus as blond and blue-eyed because that’s the way He looks in their Nativity set. Never mind that the historical record tells us differently.

For years I’ve collected international Nativity sets. A few from my own travels. Most from places such as Ten Thousand Villages. They become part of my Advent meditation. Part of my contemplation of what it means that Jesus became flesh and dwelt among us.

In my Children’s Ministry days I took a different Nativity into class each week during Advent – even when I was teaching 4 year olds. I’d ask them to look at the Nativity and we’d talk about these questions:

What does this Nativity tell us about the people who live in that country?

Why do you think Jesus looks the way He does here? Mary? Joseph?

What does this tell us about who Jesus came to earth for? 

 

I have a favorite Nativity – and it’s been my favorite since I first laid eyes on it almost 20 years ago. It’s from Cameroon and there’s a weightiness to the metal it’s made out of.  You see the distended bellies of malnourishment, and the gaunt frames where skin hangs on bones. The poverty is front and center and for some people, it’s jarring to see Jesus that way.

It’s not stately and elegant like the one from Tanzania (above left).  Or interestingly rustic like the one from Indonesia (below left).  But it grips me.  And it touches something deep in me.

Jesus dwelt among us. He didn’t just come to us as someone who will never completely understand what it’s like to live in this world. He became poor in our midst. He comes to us where we are. He understands what we live in the midst of. Even if it’s messy. Even if the poverty – or the hurt, or the shame, or the dreariness of life – overwhelms us. Even if we see no way out.

My poverty is not a physical one. My life, by any standard, is a good one. But my heart still yearns for the One who will come to me, who will dwell with me.

Jesus became flesh and dwelt among us. And through the Spirit, dwells in us today. We have a companion, an advocate, a comforter, a Savior. And it’s good news. For all people.

I’ll admit.  I read about what our World Racers are doing to serve Syrian refugees in Greece.  I hear the stories of the women forced by their poverty into the sex trade around the world. I see abandoned children – here in the States and in third world countries.  Is it really possible that Jesus is good news for them? That we have the ability to proclaim ‘good news to all people’? 

I believe we do. I also believe it can’t be just empty words and a pat on the head. I believe we must act. I believe we must learn to lay aside privilege and become poor in order to dwell among others with compassion and integrity. But it needs to be good news for me before I can proclaim it as good news for anyone else.  And when I recognize my own kind of poverty, when I am so grateful for Jesus’ presence in the midst of that poverty, then I begin to understand what it means to be incarnational. To dwell among those who are not like me.

I want to be overwhelmed, not by my circumstances, but by the love that would come to me in the midst of them.  And this year, I find myself wanting to grow in my ability to be more incarnational in my daily life.  To look for places to bring good news. 

For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich. (2 Cor. 8:9)